Worldwide design campaign launched for earthquake emoji

A worldwide design campaign aimed at finding a proper emoji to represent an earthquake has recently caught the attention of social media users.

A group of scientists initiated the campaign in a bid to use "the world's fastest-developing language" to help better spread earthquake information and make a difference during an emergency.

In this Sept. 14, 2017, photo, Django Co., Ltd. Director Shigetaka Kurita writes a pictograph during an interview at his office in Tokyo. [Photo: AP]

"Although there is an emoji for other natural disasters and weather events, there is no universal emoji for earthquakes and ground shaking," said campaign founder Stephen Hicks.

The seismologist at the University of Southampton, together with seven other researchers from the United States, France and Costa Rica, advertised the campaign on social media platforms including Twitter.

Designs should be submitted by July 14, 2018. A final shortlist of four emoji designs will be judged by the eight scientists based on the criteria "evocative, simple, universal and distinctive."

The shortlist will be posted on Twitter so that netizens can vote for a winner, and a proposal will be made to add the winner to the unicode emoji selection group.

"Having a concise, internationally-universal way of describing an earthquake that breaks language barriers could have important implications for mitigating their hazards, and maybe even saving lives," Hicks said on the main page of the campaign website.

It is not clear whether emojis have any relations with the response time in emergency situations, but emojis could be used as seismometers on social media, Hicks said.